Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Hints and Snares

While it must have been a darling occasion—Chicago friends’
social calendar event of the year—the 1938 marriage of Helen Creahan and Robert Lee Woods ushered in a phase of family history research that I find most
challenging: researching surnames as commonplace as Woods.

The first step, admittedly, wasn’t so difficult. The young
couple made their home with Helen’s parents for a few years—conveniently
coinciding with the tabulation of the 1940 census. Thus, I got a head start
with the record of the Woods’ first child, Joan.

It wasn’t until long afterwards—and after sidestepping a
tempting snare to accept, wholesale, some shaky-leaf “hints” extended to me on
Ancestry.com—that I discovered any information on the Woods’ second child, and,
indeed, regarding the final chapter in their own life story.

It was a dubious snare, that Ancestry “hint” that sought to
convince me that Helen May Creahan Woods had ultimately reverted to her maiden
name—possibility of divorce hinted at, here?—and spent her last days near Buffalo,
New York. It seemed to be a
reasonable hint. After all, the only date of birth I had found, up to that
point, was the census estimate of her birth year as 1916. The Social Security Death
Index helpfully suggested that the date should rather be July 31, 1917. Some
Public Record Index entries shouted their agreement by supplying that middle
initial “M”—see? that surely fits nicely with Helen’s middle name, May—to convince
all unwary family history passers-by that this
Helen M. Creahan died on September 27, 2008, in Erie County, New York.

Perhaps she did.

I, however—and this may come as no surprise to you—was hesitant
about swallowing that presumption. After all, what happened to Robert? Not
everyone who lived through the tempestuous sixties and beyond must yield to the
midlife crisis scourge of divorce. I needed some additional information before
I could assume this was a valid hint.

Sometimes, when Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org seem to
come up empty-handed, I take my questions to Google to see what might happen.
Admittedly, there is a gap of time between those archived moments considered
old enough to be called “historic” and those dates new enough to be claimed by
the “digital age,”—and that is one of the hardest time periods to research. But
sometimes Google can cut through that
dilemma.

Sure enough, I struck just the right combination of search
terms—juxtaposing names Helen, Creahan and Woods—to find an index created by
the Michigan City, Indiana, Public Library. While Michigan City isn’t as cutting edge as Monroe County
in its services to deliver obituary copies to the ever-demanding American genealogy-researching
public, it provides at least an electronic starting point. There in the sixty one listings for all Woods obituaries ever published in the Michigan City News Dispatch was an entry for Robert L. Woods. Granted, there were
two different entries for a Helen Woods, siphoning off some of my confidence in
this resource—after all, to even find out which of the two was the correct
entry for our Helen, I’d have to snail
mail my five bucks to them, along with a stamped, self-addressed envelope—but there
was one more line in the index that buoyed my hope: an entry for someone named
Charles Creahan Woods.

Who else would name her kid Charles Creahan Woods? This, in
my opinion, was a promising sign.

The trail didn’t end there. As many letters to penpals as I
put out in my younger years, I now am awful
at playing the snail mail game, so I knew I had to look for an alternative. That, I found in one subscription service that happened to carry the Michigan City newspaper: GenealogyBank. Thankfully,
the younger Woods’ obituary fit within the time period carried by GenealogyBank
and though the man no longer lived in town, because of his parents’ roots
there, the paper had carried a report of his passing.

That, in the end, was the very thing standing between me and getting sucked in by "helpful" hints that would have led me in the wrong direction in my research.
Call it a sixth sense developed after years of steeping in genealogical
material, but it can also be beginner’s luck just as easily. Whichever way it
is, I’m thankful for the ability to keep looking until that second bit of
corroborating evidence finds its way into my hands.

About Me

It is my contention that, after a lifetime, one of the greatest needs people have is to be remembered. They want to know: have I made a difference?
I write because I can't keep for myself the gifts others have entrusted to me. Through what I've already been given--though not forgetting those to whom I must pass this along--from family I receive my heritage; through family I leave a legacy. With family I weave a tapestry. These are my strands.